On schedule, the court held a teleconference with the parties in the RIB lawsuit today. It lasted 5 minutes. The net result was a continuation of the stay of all proceedings. The parties will teleconference again on Sept 9.

The reported reason for the indefinite stay of further proceedings is that there are third parties involved in the settlement discussions and it is “essentially impossible at this stage to represent to the Court just how long that process will take“.

There is no additional information provided as to who the third-party could be. It could be the process of developing the engineering and obtaining construction bids to remediate the RIB as proposed by Wright-Pierce, or it could simply be waiting for the results of the Underwood Engineering study of proposed alternatives with a mind to negotiating that Wright Pierce pay for one of those proposals as part of the settlement. Or it could be none of the above.

We are probably the only town in New England where the public is told absolutely nothing about the status and future plans of their municipal sewer system. I guess that goes along with unresolved ongoing problems for eight years and one of the highest sewer rates in the state. I’m not talking about marginally higher rates, Wolfeboro’s rates are nearly twice as much as a typical city or town in New Hampshire.